I spent an hour sitting and visiting with a neighbor the other night, a neighbor nearing the end of her life, thanks to stage IV breast cancer that has spread to both lungs. We talked about all sorts of things -- how she should have been more vigilant about mammograms, how it's nice for her to know exactly what it is that will take her life, and how she can eat just about anything she wants now. We also talked about exercise.

My neighbor, who is in her early 70s, said she was in the marching band in high school. But ever since that time in her life, she's never really exercised. In her day, she said, exercise was about vanity. Women worked out to achieve a certain figure, to look good. There was very little talk about the benefits of exercise on overall health. And since she didn't buy into the gotta-look-a-certain-way mentality, she'd didn't buy into exercise either. In hindsight, she wishes she would have.

This thread of our discussion really makes me think. It makes me mostly think how lucky the young people of today are to know the health merits of exercise, to realize that while it can make a body look good, it's also a life-saving venture. It makes me feel good that my kids, now seven and five, will likely always know of exercise as a health measure. I'm not even sure they realize it can be used to achieve a certain appearance. Lucky for them.

Clearly, exercise is about wellness. Now, in her unwell days, my neighbor knows this. There's just very little she can do about it now. Unlucky for her.